Nightmare Scenario
by shaunathan
Summary: Sapphire encounters her worst nightmare.


Sapphire vaulted a boulder with the athleticism of an Olympian, hitting the mossy ground with both feet and sprinting onward. "C'mon, prissy boy, hurry up, it's getting away!" she yelled back at her companion.

In response, she heard a tired gasp and a thud as Ruby leaped over the boulder, hitting the ground hard and rolling unceremoniously into a kneeling position. He grasped his shoulder. "I'm coming, I'm coming!" he snapped, glaring at her as he forced himself to keep going so he could keep up with her wild pace. "Not everyone is as nimble as you, you know!"

"Work out more!" Sapphire retorted. She shielded her eyes from the dead branches of a rotting bush, shouldering through it in hot pursuit. "We have to catch this thing before it gets away and hurts more people!"

"What are we even chasing?" Ruby whined, sprinting to keep up despite his exhaustion. "They said it was a shadow. How are we supposed to know this is the right shadow?"

Sapphire was getting tired of her boyfriend's constant complaining. It seemed that all he did was worry and complain. Even when the townspeople had so nicely asked the two of them, known as heroes even in this overseas region, to save their town by defeating this 'shadow' that had been plaguing their town with unending nightmares, he'd told her to wait and consider whether this was a good idea or not. She'd almost shouted at him in front of everyone to stop being so selfish. Sometimes she wondered why she still loved him. "Shadows don't move, Ruby!"

"They do if they're yours," he muttered.

She gritted her teeth and forced herself not to go ballistic on him. Tensions were high and she knew she wasn't as angry as she imagined, but it was just so hard not to flip out when he kept on being annoying despite the dire circumstances. Instead, she pushed on ahead, dashing through a small clearing filled with dead soil that consumed the moonlight and left only darkness in its place.

Suddenly, from behind, she heard a panicked shout, "Sapphire!"

Sapphire whirled around. Her eyes shot open wide with terror as she saw the shape that had given her night terrors every night for years, that made her every sleeping moment a living hell. Even now, as an eighteen-year-old young woman, she still woke up in a breathless cold sweat when she dreamed of this. The scythe-like crescent, crimson as though it was already bloodstained. The dagger fangs and equally sharp claws. The demented red eyes, eyes that signaled murder to whoever they looked at.

A Salamence, bigger than any she'd ever seen before, was reared up on its hind legs. In its shadow, Ruby stood, frozen and cowering, too shocked to move. Sapphire's heart stood still as she realized he couldn't save himself. She made to run and push him out of the way, but her limbs refused to move. They felt like they were submerged in liquid concrete. Her breath caught in her throat, unable to even voice a shout of warning. She was powerless.

She saw it in slow motion. The Salamence's weight crashed down. Its claws raked bloody streaks across Ruby's chest, like the scars on his head, but bigger, deeper, nastier. He fell backward, his face frozen in shock and his hands clutching the valleys of missing flesh on his chest. Dark red blood splattered to the ground, mixing with the dust and staining the Salamence's claws crimson, like its wings.

All of a sudden, Sapphire could move again. "TORO!" she shouted with feral fury, sending out her Blaziken. Not needing a command, the Pokemon kicked the bloody dragon with a flame-covered leg, the fire type's sheer power launching its target ten yards backward, where it collapsed, unmoving.

Sapphire ran straight to Ruby, who had collapsed on his back. He stared blankly up at the starless sky, unseeing. Blood pumped out of the cuts on his chest, pooling on the ground around him. "Ruby! Ruby, can you see me?" she demanded. She pressed her hands to the cuts in a futile attempt to stem the blood loss. It streamed around her palms and through her fingers, staining the fabric of her gloves with the very life of their creator.

Ruby's eyes twitched when he recognized her voice. He slowly, slowly focused on her. His lips barely moved when he whispered, "Sapph?"

Sapphire felt like there were holes in her own chest when she heard how weak his voice was. Tears filled her eyes. "H-Hold on, Ruby, I'm gonna get help!" She pulled out her PokeGear, her bloodstained fingers slipping across the touch screen. "I'm gonna call Steven—" His hand feebly covering the screen and pushing it down cut her off.

"Too late," he murmured. He coughed and blood from an internal wound trickled out of his mouth. "I'm... sorry."

The tears came faster. Sapphire gripped his hand between her own and looked into his eyes, forcing them to focus on her and keep him conscious. She could barely form words. "No! No, you can't! Remember? Y-You told me we'd be together until the last moment!"

Ruby drew a shaky breath, the air catching on the blood that was blocking his airways. "Last... moment..." he breathed. His eyes glazed over, staring back up at the unfeeling sky. He didn't breathe in again.

Sapphire felt like her lungs were filled with lead. "No," she whispered. Then, in a desperate wail, "No!" Tears dripped from her chin, joining the blood on Ruby's chest as she gripped his shoulders and shook him. "Wake up, prissy boy! Stop joking! Wake up!"

No response.

"Wake up!" she begged, her voice quieter, broken. "Wake up... come on, we can still save you! I-I'm sorry I dragged you into this. I'll never doubt you again, just quit playing around and wake up!"

Silence.

Reality finally sunk in. Sapphire's muscles turned to jelly as her spirit broke. "Please..." she sobbed, pressing her forehead against Ruby's, his skin already cold. "Please wake up. I never actually told you... Ruby, wake up so I... so I can tell you..." Her chest tightened as an icy fist gripped her heart. "So I can tell you I love you."

Nothing.

Absolute, dead silence.

Alternate Ending:

It felt like an eternity Sapphire crouched there in the inky darkness, feeling cold skin where there should have been warm and hearing one heartbeat where there should have been two. She felt broken, like her insides had vanished, leaving nothing but a Ruby-shaped hole in her heart. So great was her grief that the forest seemed to recede from her until nothing but pitch-black shadow remained, a dark void where she waited to die.

But then, a familiar voice spoke from behind her. "Sapph?"

She almost didn't look, convinced it must be a grief-induced hallucination, convinced that if she looked she'd crush the last, tiny bit of light still inside her. But she looked anyway, and she froze in shock. Behind her, Ruby, whole and uninjured, stared down at her with concern etched in his face. Stunned, she whirled back around to look at his body, but it had vanished.

Slowly, shakily, she got to her feet, glancing around at the forest that had reappeared along with her boyfriend, who she then stared at like she wasn't sure he'd be there if she looked away. "A-Are you real?"

His eyebrows knit together. "I think so. Sapph, are you okay? You're crying."

At first, Sapphire thought he meant the dried tears she'd cried out of grief, but she then realized she was crying again, though this time in relief and joy. "I... What happened?"

"I caught up with you and found you like this. There was a... a dark cloud, or something, around your head but it went away."

"Dark cloud..." Sapphire repeated. "Like a shadow..."

Ruby shrugged. "Something like that. Are you sure you're—whoa!"

He cut off as Sapphire tackled him with a hug. She put her chin on his shoulder and gripped his torso tight, reveling in the warmth of his skin. Warm. Alive. "You're real," she murmured joyfully. "You're real, you're real, you're real!"

"Um... yeah." Ruby laughed nervously. "Sapph, what's going on? What happened to you?"

"Nightmare," she told him as she pulled away to arm's length, smiling and still shedding tears of joy. "A really bad nightmare. But it wasn't real. You are."

Ruby still looked bemused, but he smiled too. "Yeah, I'm real."

Sapphire thought again of what had happened during the illusion—of his dying words, and of what she would have never been able to tell him. She took a deep breath. "Ruby, I've been meaning to say..."

But his eyes weren't locked with hers anymore. He stared over her shoulder, shocked. "There it is!" he exclaimed, breaking away to point. "The shadow!" He started after it, but turned back to her. "Sorry, what were you going to say?"

Sapphire rubbed her tears away with the back of her wrist, not stained with his blood. She smiled. "I'll tell you later. Let's go!"


End file.
